James Barrie - Complete Works of J. M. Barrie

That summer it was so pleasant to be out of doors that Charles was little in the study. Sometimes he thought of writing in the orchard, but there was the danger of the MS. being blown away.

The winter was such an unusually hard one that his fingers froze if he sat for any length of time at the study table. We often discussed the advisability of pushing the study table near the fire. But it is too heavy for one, and that winter he was specially anxious that I should not overexert myself. So many exquisite evenings we had that winter, crouching over the blazing logs; nothing between us and bliss except that hateful MS.

For ever and ever and ever was the date to which I now wanted Charles to abandon the work, but he still clung to the idea of resumption at some future time.

‘Let us say this day one year hence,’ I suggested.

He thought that was too definite.

‘Well, then, let us say till an idea strikes you.’

He had some objection to that also; I forget now what it was. We finally decided that he should cease the actual writing of the play ‘until he had had time to look round.’ I don’t know why, but this phrase pleased him very much.

Never since that happy day has the MS. given us the slightest trouble. The phrase, on the other hand, has been changed several times. It has been ‘until we move into a more convenient house,’ and ‘until we have settled down in the new house,’ and at present it is ‘until the children are older.’ You must not think that Charles has given up the idea of being a dramatist; I have never known him fuller of it than during the last year or two. I notice also that he now speaks of the project cheerily to our friends, which by-the-by I have ceased to do.

We are now nearly middle-aged, and I love Charles more than ever, perhaps just because I know him better. I also love his little MS. Never again shall I speak slightingly of it. It has been a success to me. Our enormous interest in it was what first brought us together; perhaps but for it our glorious union would never have had a beginning. So you see Charles began my play beautifully though he may not be able to begin his own (but that remains to be seen).”

THUS do the Gods mock their might-have-beens. This luckless Charles probably never found a beginning for his play, and so far as I can discover not one page exists of his virgin MS. Gone similarly into the waste are nearly all the many hundred MSS. of Anon’s articles, this of ‘My Husband’s Play’ being (for some great end unknown to me) among the few exceptions. In his day if there was such a thing as typewriting he had never heard of it; all the articles he sent to the ‘St. James’s’ and elsewhere were in this same shaky scrawl, and oh, it is ill to read. I suppose there were other contributors who wrote no better, and I marvel how Greenwood found time to decipher us and yet edit his paper. It has taken me half an hour to stumble through this article, and even then I leapt some of the words. How much more fortunate the editors of to-day with their demand for typing.

In my schooldays I wrote the most boastful copperplate; sometimes of an evening I still gaze at it with proud bewilderment. It went, I think, not gradually with over-writing, but suddenly like my smile. If the two ever meet in whatever Valhalla such things go to when they leave us, one would like to think that they quaff a goblet to Anon.

About fifteen years ago a great change for the better came over my handwriting. Even proofreaders, so cunning at their job, had at times asked me to translate, but I was saved by an attack of writer’s cramp to which, once abhorred, I now make a reverential bow, though it is as ready as ever to pounce if thoughtlessly I take up the pen in my right hand. I had to learn to write with the left, not so irksome to me as it would be to most, for I am naturally left-handed (and still kick with the left foot). I had never from infancy written with the left hand, however, and progress was slow. I now write as easily with this hand as once with the other, and if I take any pains the result is almost pleasing to the eye. The hope of my friends is that I shall never recover my facility with the other. Nevertheless, there is not the same joy in writing with the left hand as with the right. One thinks down the right arm, while the left is at best an amanuensis. The right has the happier nature, the left is naturally sinister. I write things with the left, or to put the matter I think more correctly, it writes things with me, that the right would have expressed more humanely. I never, so far as I can remember, wrote uncomfortable tales like ‘Dear Brutus’ and ‘Mary Rose’ till I crossed over to my other hand. I could not have written these, as they are, with my right hand any more than I could have written ‘Quality Street’ with my left. Anon of course was right-handed. If he had written this little sketch ‘My Husband’s Play’ with the left it would probably have ended quite differently, say with the wife leaving her husband in disdain, or even writing his play herself.

CHAPTER XXII

“THE CLUB GHOST” — WHAT DOES ONE DO IN CLUBS? — HENRY JAMES — THE ADELPHI BY NIGHT

“THE club library is a pleasantly gloomy room overlooking St. James’s Street, and its walls are reported by some to be lined with books. Others, however, think they are only dummies, and as glass doors separate them from members, no one will perhaps ever know for certain.

Though I have been a member of the club for a year I do not even now know a soul in the ancient place. If any other member were to address me, so surely have I fallen into the club ways that I should probably complain to the committee, and I presume he would behave similarly if I addressed him. I, who was once sociable, go from door to door in the club looking for a room in which I can be alone. When I find it I either sit motionless in the window or slumber by the fire, vaguely conscious that other members, also seeking clubable facilities, have, now and again, peeped in and finding me in possession have departed petulantly. It is the cosiest club in London, but I am still young, and after my disturbing experience of to-day I contemplate removing my name from the books.

I woke, dimly conscious that I was in the library and that the servants must have forgotten to light the gas. Perhaps I shifted my position a little, for an ash-tray fell off the arm of my chair. I did not know for certain (I now speak as one giving evidence in a Court of Law) that it was an ash-tray. I will not swear on oath that it was an ash-tray. I believe it was an ash-tray. I swear, however, that I heard something fall, and immediately a voice growled ‘Sh-sh.’ I paid no attention, but presently I remembered that of course when I fell asleep I was alone in the room. Had I heard ‘Sh-sh’P The fire gleamed for a moment, but I opened my eyes too late. I was almost slumbering in a sleeping again, but not quite, for I could hear myself breathing heavily. Then it struck me that what I heard was not my own breathing. Evidently the intruder was in the chair by the window. The fire brightened, and I looked at the chair drowsily. There was no one there. I looked at the other chairs. They were empty. Still I heard heavy breathing, followed by a yawn as if the man was stretching himself. I yawned myself, and my yawn was an echo of his. Or was his an echo of mine? They were strangely similar. Who was he, and how did he get into the room without my knowledge? But, stop — where was he? I fixed my eyes, now wide open, on the chair by the window, from which those sounds seemed to proceed. The room was again in dusk. I stretched out my foot gently to where his legs ought to have been, but it encountered nothing. I drew my foot back in some surprise, and, leaning forward, felt for him with my hands. They slid down an arm of the chair, and then into space. Had I not been a clubman I would have risen in agitation. Evidently the fellow was awake, wherever he had bestowed his limbs, and I made no scruple, therefore, of for the first time addressing a fellow-member. ‘Very careless of these servants,’ I began, ‘not lighting the—’